Hidden Gems Across Japan
1,610 spots
Kunimigaoka
Kunimigaoka is a ridge above the Takachiho basin where, according to the legend, Takeiwatatsu — a grandson of Emperor Ji…
Ebino Kogen
Ebino Kogen is a plateau at around 1,200 metres in the Kirishima volcanic range, and it is the base for the climb up Kar…
Umagase
Umagase is the tip of the Hyuga peninsula, where cliffs of columnar-jointed welded tuff drop seventy metres into the Pac…
Mimitsu
Mimitsu was the port of the Takanabe domain at the mouth of the Mimitsu river, and in the late Edo and Meiji periods its…
Shiiba Village
Shiiba is counted with Shirakawa-go and the Iya valley as one of Japan's three great hidden regions, and the reason is t…
Aya Teruha Suspension Bridge
The bridge is 250 metres long, 1.2 metres wide and 142 metres above the Ayaminami river, which for a long time made it t…
Himeshima
Himeshima is a small volcanic island off the tip of the Kunisaki peninsula, reached by a twenty-minute ferry, with a pop…
Futagoji
Futagoji sits at the centre of the Kunisaki peninsula, on the slopes of Mount Futago, which is the volcanic cone the who…
Hita Yakisoba
Hita yakisoba is fried rather than stir-fried, and the distinction is the whole dish. Boiled noodles are pressed onto a…
Beppu Reimen
Beppu's cold noodles came back from Manchuria. A returnee opened a grilled meat shop in the town after the war and tried…
Oita Prefectural Art Museum
Ban Shigeru designed this building around a single idea: that a museum should not be a sealed box. The whole ground floo…
Saganoseki Seki-aji and Seki-saba
The Hayasui strait between Kyushu and Shikoku runs a tidal current strong enough that horse mackerel and mackerel living…
Hakusui Dam
Hakusui is an irrigation weir, 14 metres high and 87 metres across, built between 1934 and 1938 on the upper Ono river,…
Inazumi Underwater Cave
Inazumi is a limestone cave that was drowned. The cavern formed over two hundred million years ago and was flooded rough…
Tadewara Marsh
Tadewara is one of the largest intermediate marshes in Japan, sitting at about 1,000 metres on the Handa highland at the…
Kokonoe Yume Suspension Bridge
The bridge is 390 metres long and hangs 173 metres above the Naruko river gorge, which makes it the highest pedestrian s…
Nakatsu Karaage
Nakatsu has more than thirty dedicated fried chicken shops for a city of eighty thousand, and with neighbouring Usa and…
Hitome Hakkei
Hitome Hakkei means eight views at a glance, and the name is literal: from one platform in the middle of Shin-Yabakei yo…
Ao no Domon
A monk named Zenkai arrived at the base of Kyoshuho cliff in 1735, found that travellers were being killed on a chain-as…
Tashibu-no-Sho
Tashibu-no-Sho is a valley of rice paddies that has been farmed in essentially the same shape since the Heian period. It…
Fukiji
The Great Hall of Fukiji is the oldest wooden building in Kyushu and one of three surviving Amida halls in Japan of the…
Kumano Magaibutsu
Two figures are cut into a rock face in the hills of the Kunisaki peninsula: a Dainichi Nyorai about 6.7 metres high and…
Showa no Machi
Bungotakada's shopping street had lost almost all its trade by the 1990s. Rather than redevelop, the town went the other…
Kitsuki Castle Town
Kitsuki is the only sandwich-shaped castle town in Japan. Samurai districts sit on two facing plateaus, the north and th…
Estimated from distance to the nearest airport or shinkansen station. Confirm actual journey times before you travel.